Sovereign Hope (25 page)

“
Can you come and hold this a second?” He held up a wrench in
one hand while lifting the engine block from the floor with the
other, the muscles in his arm straining under the weight. I froze
to the spot.

“
This is heavy, y’know,” he added when I didn’t move. I shook
myself out of my paralysis and took the wrench from his
outstretched hand.

My head swam,
filled with the smell of him as he leaned forward to heave the
block around. Citrus soap and something else, something masculine
and charged. Why did he have to smell so good? I couldn’t think. I
held my breath, scrutinizing the fine hairs on the back of his neck
as he fiddled around. When he reached back for the wrench, his hand
found mine and I fumbled, struggling to hand it over. He turned to
look at me, those fierce green eyes piercing me through. Then he
smiled.

He might as
well have slapped me straight in the face.

“
Try not to drop that on me, okay?”

I sank back onto my heels. Had he just
smiled
at me?
Really
smiled, like it was the most
natural thing in the world? He lowered the block, apparently
pleased with whatever he had accomplished, and moved around the
other side. I made to get out of his way, but he gestured for me to
stay put, seating himself opposite.

“
Do you know what this is?” He sat back on his heels, holding
up a fist-sized piece of metal with a red plastic base. A thick
black wire led from the silver cap at its top, and four identical
cables emerged from its red underside. I had no idea. I shook my
head, mute.

“
This is a distributor. It’s part of the car’s ignition
system.”

“
Oh, sure,” I said lightly, as though I instantly knew exactly
what it was he was holding out to me in his hand. I took it and
turned it over a couple of times, impressed by its weight but still
clueless as to its function. He scooted closer. I bit down on my
lower lip, not willing to look up from the strange piece of
machinery.

“
You see this wire?” He rotated the distributor in my hands.
When he brushed my hand with his fingertips, my skin burst into
invisible flames. “This wire on top supplies a high voltage charge
to a rotor inside here.” He gestured to the main silver body. I
nodded again. He paused, searching my face, looking to see if I
understood.

“
Yeah. Okay. The rotor.” I had no idea what he was talking
about. All I could think about was how close he was, and the
amazing flecks of gold and amber in his eyes.

“
Yeah. Right. This is the cap. The rotor spins inside here.”
He tapped the top again. “The rotor passes four contacts inside the
cap connected to these wires below, which each connect to a
cylinder in the car’s engine. When the rotor passes each contact,
the current arcs from the rotor and down the wire to the cylinder,
firing it in turn. The car runs smoothly because the cylinders are
fired individually, one at a time. You see?”

His voice was
richly hypnotic, but he might as well have been speaking Japanese.
I barely heard a word as he demonstrated how to reattach the
distributor to the car, holding his hand over mine as he neatly
fitted it back into the engine. Skin on skin contact and not a
frown or a flinch in sight. In fact, he seemed utterly immune to it
until my breath caught in my throat.

I literally
saw the second our close proximity hit him. He froze, and for a
moment I knew he was feeling what I was feeling: the static charge
crackling between our skin. He looked deeply into my face and
swallowed, his expression hazy. The crimson, burning hue blossomed
on my cheeks again. I knew I looked a little disorientated as I
stared back up at him. He broke our strange, intimate moment and
looked away, clearing his throat.

He knew.

Stellar work, Farley
.

I placed the distributor back on the white sheet, tears
springing to my eyes.
No, no, no. Don’t
cry!
I
begged,
No one else starts crying
whenever they’re embarrassed. Please do NOT do this!
Seemed I was out of luck.
“Thanks for the Mechanics 101. I’m probably not the best
student, though.” I turned and marched off out into the corridor,
suspecting I hadn’t been quick enough to hide my first
tear.

The door to my
room had only just slammed shut when it suddenly bounced off the
frame, flying open right behind me. Daniel stood there, fuming in
the doorway.

“
What are you doing?” I cried.

“
No, what are
you
doing?” he yelled back. His chest heaved as he stared at
me.

“
I don’t know what you mean.”

“
You damn well do! This
can’t
happen.”

“
Nothing’s happening!”

“
Then why are you crying? Why are you upset?” He looked like
he was about to snap. He stalked into the room and kicked the door
closed behind him.

“
I can’t help it. I’m not… not crying. It just happens when
I’m… I’m…”

He set his
jaw, his hands twitching at his sides. “You feel something for me,”
he said, daring me to try and deny it.

There was no
point trying to hide it now. I looked away, numb.

“
You can’t feel that way about me.” He lowered his voice.
“It’ll only get you hurt.”

“
Oh, come on! That’s so cliché! What’s that even supposed to
mean?”

“
It means my life is one that prevents me from the luxury of
silly romantic notions. I can’t have you look at me the way you
just did. I don’t care what Agatha’s told you, or what she thinks
she knows. This isn’t going to happen, okay?”

Silly romantic notions?
My
embarrassment quickly moved aside to make room for anger. “Agatha
hasn’t told me anything. None of you ever do. You’re right,
I
do
feel
something for you, but don’t worry. From your reaction, it’s pretty
clear that the feeling’s not mutual. I’m not some crazy stalker.
I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t flatter yourself into thinking
that I’m completely head over heels in love with you. So just go!”
I screamed. His words had destroyed me, rejection a bitter poison
on my tongue.

“
You don’t understand.”

“
I think I do.”

“
No! You don’t!” The hard look in his eyes morphed into
something more pained and desperate. He stepped forward and grabbed
me roughly by the arms, the same way he’d done in the silo. “I sat
there and watched you for months. Months! I watched you everywhere
you went. I watched you when you didn’t go anywhere at all! When
you were so low you couldn’t even leave the house. I watched the
most beautiful person I’d ever seen get screwed over by the cops
and have her life threatened on a daily basis without her even
knowing it.”

I stared up at
him, frozen and unblinking, his words barraging me.

“
How do you think I felt when I found you bleeding and broken
on the floor of Aldan’s room? I thought you were
dead!
” He stood, his
eyes on fire, with something terrible strewn across his face. His
voice dropped to barely more than a whisper. “We’ve got a war about
to be unleashed here. One I’m going to die for. One where you and I
are an impossibility. So I don’t get to tell you that I love you.
And you
don’t
get
to look at me like that.”

He charged out of the room and slammed the door so hard that
the stack of CDs on the shelf toppled over and crashed loudly to
the floor. I placed my palm on my solar plexus, half expecting to
find a hole there, one that had just been savagely kicked straight
through my chest. Had…had he just told me in a roundabout way that
he was
in love
with me?

My body shook
with the power of my wracking sobs. They almost drowned out the
timid knock at the door. I caught the next cry in my throat,
miserably hoping that Agatha—it could only have been her—would go
away. I should have known better. I hid in my knees, not wanting
her to see my blotchy, makeup-stained face.

Agatha crept
into the room and slipped herself down beside me, rubbing a hand up
and down my back. “I’m sorry. I should have seen that coming. Are
you okay?”

“
No.” I sounded like a little kid, small and hurt.

“
In his head, he’s doing the right thing, Farley. He thinks
he’s saving you a lot of pain and heartache in the long
run.”

“
Oh, and this…this is a walk in the park, right?”

“
No, of course not. I’m not saying I agree with him. He cares
about you more than you can know. He’s just never felt this way
about anybody before. He doesn’t know how to deal with it. He feels
vulnerable and that terrifies him. He’s spent the last hundred and
fifty years closing himself off from the world so he can be strong
enough when the time comes. Now that time is here and he’s the
weakest he’s ever been.”

I blinked back
my tears and looked at the tiny woman. “So that means he has to
punish me for it by treating me like he hates me? I don’t see why
he thinks he’s going to die, anyway. Surely there’s a better way to
deal with this problem than to pointlessly throw three or four
lives away? Their plan won’t work!”

Agatha looked
sad. “Daniel’s doing the only thing he can think of to save you.
There are things you don’t understand. Things that would hurt you
if you knew them. We both just have to have faith that he’s doing
the right thing.”

She sounded
like Aldan—hope and faith. It just didn’t seem possible. Especially
now I knew the guy I was falling in love with felt the same way
about me, and he was probably going to die on a seventy-thirty
split.

Agatha
grimaced and squeezed my hand. “I know this is the worst timing,
kiddo, but I really do need to talk to you about something.”

“
You have
got
to be kidding.” That look in my bedroom earlier had been a
well-constructed mask, and I could now see the concern etched into
the lines of Agatha’s face. Of course, things couldn’t just get
better for once.

“
Yeah. It’s kind of important.”

The weight of
Agatha’s words filled me with a whole new sense of dread. “How bad
are we talking?”

“
It’s just a complication that could cause problems. Aldan
thinks we should act now before the situation could have any effect
on our plans, though. Come on, we’ll get you fixed up and I’ll
explain.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Oh. Brother.

Staring
resentfully at the face in the mirror wasn’t making me feel any
better. My skin looked sickly in the yellow light, and my eyes were
all puffy and swollen. The reflection was familiar, sure, but it
wasn’t me. The girl in the mirror had practically been kidnapped,
was caught in the middle of a conflict between a bunch of people
that could live forever, and was being slowly crushed by the guy
she loved. Things were only just starting to get nasty for her. I
was just Farley Hope, your average teenager who loved Thai food and
was terrible at math.

Pulling myself
up straight, I glowered angrily at the other girl, hating her for
ruining my life, and stalked out of the bathroom. Agatha sat at her
computer, chewing nervously on her index finger as I
approached.

“
So what’s the news?”

Agatha
motioned me over. Her computer screen was already on, its low hum
barely noticeable anymore. On the screen was Tess.

“
Tess? Why do you have a file on Tess?”

“
We think she might be in danger. We’ve been trying to confirm
our suspicions for a long time now. That’s what I’ve been doing
these past few weeks. I’ve been searching for information but the
Reavers have countless people working for them. If they don’t want
you finding something, then you usually don’t.”

“
Riiiight. But what’s that got to do with her?”

“
She’s with your brother, Farley. We think they might be
grooming her to produce his heir,” she said.

The cogs inside my head ground to a halt.
“
My
brother
?”

“
Yes, remember? I told you Elliot had already fathered a son
when he met your mother. He should have taken his rites immediately
after, but he spent those months with Moira instead.”

“
My brother?” The concept still wouldn’t stick.
“Who?”

“
Oliver. Oliver is your brother.”

“
Oliver?
Tess’ boyfriend? But that
can’t be…”

“
Yes, it can. We’ve watched him even longer than we watched
you. It took me years to locate him. We’ve seen him come up through
elementary school, little league baseball, high school, the works.
And now Tess is on the scene. We’ve monitored their relationship,
and her, from the word go. That’s how we came across you, Farley.
It was an accident. In her emails, Tess mentioned your missing
mother and we thought that it was worth checking out. I knew Moira
by sight. When I saw her missing person picture in the paper, it
was too much of a coincidence. It was a short leap to guess that
you were Elliot’s daughter.”

“
You read Tess’ emails?” It shouldn’t have been a surprise
that they knew how to hack email accounts.